Leading Creative Teams for Productivity, Innovation, and Happiness
I’m headed to Montreal March 1st to co-lead a master class workshop for leaders of creative teams. More on that below. First, on the subject of leadership in Canada…
Last Fall I enjoyed giving the keynote for Diamond Municipal’s client conference in beautiful Banff. A Microsoft partner, highly-regarded employer, and great place to work, Diamond Municipal provides solutions for municipal governments across Canada.
Why the Leadership Gift and Me?
Diamond wanted clients to experience the breakthrough power of the Leadership Gift for individuals, teams, and organizations the way Diamond is experiencing it at work in their individuals, teams, and entire organization.
The nearly four-foot by eight-foot mind-map shown above was hanging in the room where I spoke. It shows the most important elements of the Leadership Gift for leading yourself and others to greater degrees of freedom, self-empowerment, breakthrough, and choice.
Needless to say, I was honored and surprised. Thanks to Diamond Municipal you can download a Legal size 8.5″ x 14″ poster of the mind-map.
Mikko Sorvari, Director of Research and Development, (Mikko’s profile) explained he and his team regularly study the Leadership Gift to improve their performance and happiness as a team — a fact I knew since I’ve been supporting Mikko in his Leadership Gift practice for some time. One of Mikko’s talented team members drew this mindmap while listening to one of my videos.
So what does practicing the Leadership Gift do for them?
Says Mikko:

Mikko Sorvari, Director of Development, Diamond Municipal Solutions
A good example of the Leadership Gift working is this. One of my team members called last week after he had made a mistake that had negative impact to the whole team. As you can imagine he went on about how bad he felt and how worried he was about losing his job over it, etc. Since we were videoconferencing I just looked at him and asked “Beating yourself up are you?” He looked at me and said “ Yes, and feeling pretty low right now.” My next question was “And how long are you going to do that?” He smiled at me, snapped his fingers and said “Done, I am over it. Let‘s figure a way to prevent this from happening in the future.”
Had I not introduced the Responsibility Process early on to the team, I would have joined him in beating him up and helping him come up with excuses and stories why it happened. Now, we simply had this short conversation and moved past the issue.
What is the Return on Responsibility?
What’s the ROI (return on investment) for studying and practicing the Leadership Gift? In this case it is avoiding many thousands of dollars in wasted time and effort in your team and organization focusing on blame and justification. Instead Mikko noticed where his colleague was focused mentally (in Shame), reminded his colleague of his Leadership Gift, and together they moved directly to a solution-focus.
Now that’s leadership! Authentic, powerful, transformational leadership.
Don’t you and your team deserve that?
What’s your story…
…about the return on responsibility for yourself, your team, or your organization? Let me know in a comment below.
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Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide.
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